


Cruci-Fiction (Yep.)

by trycatpennies



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), Kris Allen (Musician)
Genre: Character Death, Implied Violence, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-11
Updated: 2011-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-19 06:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trycatpennies/pseuds/trycatpennies





	Cruci-Fiction (Yep.)

Kris gets used to many things when it comes to Adam. He gets used to shared hours with him, that turn to broken off sentences ending mid word when he turns and Adam is gone. He gets used to laughing off blind dates his friends set him up on, because he's too nice to say no and it's too hard to explain a consistently missing boyfriend. He spends hours on the phone with his Mama, telling her about they boy of his dreams, and then avoiding questions when she asks when Kris is bringing this mystery boy home. He gets used to missing Adam on nights when it's cold and when he's sick and tired of everything. When he needs someone to take care of him, and the only person who he wants is trapped.

Kris doesn't know what Adam's trapped in. Time or space. He knows that Adam's got minimal control over when he comes. He knows that what control Adam has keeps him coming back to Kris each time. He knows that he sees Adam from different times, each time, but that Adam's mind is whole. That he remembers everything from his time, and from Kris'.

-

There's a beautiful man standing next to Kris' car, and Kris stops in the middle of the sidewalk, and feels people brush past him, hears them mutter curses and speak louder insults. And he can't move, because there are blue eyes and a shock of black hair and freckles and Kris is stuck somewhere else, somewhere in a dream that might be real because he doesn't remember having it.

Adam tells him not to freak out. He explains, over coffee. Over the first of many cups and already Kris knows that Adam takes three sugars and two half and half. Kris also knows that Adam fixed Kris' coffee differently than how Kris has been doing it for his entire life, and it had been perfect.

It's part of what makes him more ready to believe, to accept what Adam lays out in front of him. A ridiculous graphic novel, cartoon and special effects kind of story.

"About two thousand, three hundred years ago, I died," Adam says, and he sips his coffee, blinking in the bright light of the diner. Kris is listening, watching. Counting freckles on Adam's face and the sound of Adam's voice, how it's slightly familiar and how he's desperate to hear more. And boy, does he hear more.

Adam tells him, carefully. That he's died often. That he jumps back and forth, and that he'll die more times, everytime. That he's not sure whether he's alive in this world, or alive somewhere else. He just knows that when he dies, this is where he comes back. Until he's gone again.

"To die?" Kris asks, and he's surprised at how normal his voice sounds. Proud, and surprised.

"I don't know," Adam answers, honestly. "It seems to be the only thing I really do. I show up somewhere, some _time_ and I'm never there more than, I don't know, four days. And then I die."

"Does it hurt?" Kris asks, and Adam smiles, shakes his head.

"It hasn't, yet. But," he stops. Kris waits. "It's always been fast. So."

So, who knows.

-

Adam has scars, from deaths he's died and ones he hasn't. There are layers, and Kris loves looking at them, these unique marks that set Adam even further apart from everyone else Kris has ever met. He likes discovering patterns, wear and tear, so to speak. One night, while Adam's sleeping, he marks out a history.

There are three different categories. Deaths died, deaths left to die, and recent deaths. The oldest ones are deaths Adam's died already. There are stab wounds, three or four. There are two bullet holes, one in Adam's upper thigh and one through the left side of his chest. There's a particularly large scar on his side, that Adam doesn't like to talk about. Kris knows there are more deaths that didn't leave marks. That are poisons, or shocks. Heart attacks.

The next layer of scars is recent deaths. Adam's back from Japanese civil war, an ancient dynasty and a katana wound. A particularly long scar across his belly, that was deep and wide. It's healed, they always heal before Adam comes to Kris. He wonders, idly, if there's something in the travel that makes it heal. It's still oddly raw, and the skin is shiny, the way new skin looks. Kris touches it and Adam shifts, as if it's more sensitive than the rest of him.

The last layer are the scars that haven't happened yet. They appear as faint outlines of what they'll be and Kris doesn't go looking for them. He doesn't want to, and Adam doesn't like it when he does.

-

"How do you want your eggs?" Kris yells from the kitchen. It's a one bedroom, three floor walk up in West Hollywood, and Kris has bacon grease on his jeans and cooking spray in a pan.

"Sunnyside up. Or easy, like you," Adam yells back. And Kris rolls his eyes, cracking three eggs into a pan and then walking into the doorway that seperates the kitchen from the living room, where Adam's sprawled out on the floor. He insists the couch isn't comfortable, so there are library books spread out on the floor, highlighters and pens and calculators and notebooks covering the tables and carpet. Adam looks up and grins.

"I'm going to make the eggs spongy and hard if you're not nice to me," Kris says, and Adam pouts, then reaches out, wrapping a hand around Kris' ankle.

"Please, don't force me to consume such atrocities as overcooked eggs." Kris is already cracking up, as Adam manages to summon up some fake tears to add to the melodramatic performance. When Kris calms down, he turns, walks into the kitchen and turns the stove off, egg whites still jelly in the pan. Not the time. He walks back into the living room and sits, cross legged, watching Adam work.

"How did you find me?" he asks, finally. Adam bites his lip, looks up. He's not stalling, Kris knows him too well. He's just thinking.

"I'd spent three days performing Demetrius in Titus, at the Globe. A dream come true, and I thought I'd found my perfect moment. That I could die this second and be truly happy. One sword hilt to the head later, and I was standing next to your car, watching you walk towards me and remembering how in love with you I've always been, despite never having known you. It was like all these memories we didn't have yet came rushing back- forward? whatever, back to me and I knew you. I knew it was you."

Kris opens his mouth to speak but Adam holds up a hand.

"I've been in love before, but this was. I'd just been thinking that I could die happy, right? Except then, seeing you, I knew that the thing I'd been looking for, the feeling, the moment? Was the moment that made me pray not to die. I saw you and I wanted it harder than anything I've ever wanted. Not to die. Because dying with you wouldn't be dying happy. It'd be missing you forever. I didn't find you, Kris. You saved me."

Kris doesn't ask more questions.

-

The first time Kris is truly scared happens months after the breakfast of truth, as Adam calls it. It happens in the middle of a sunny afternoon, and Kris is coming in the door of the apartment, three weeks without Adam and there's crying coming from the bathroom.

He runs, drops his stuff, door left ajar. There's blood _everywhere_ and Kris is freaking out, but Adam's shaking his head.

"It hurts, Kris. It hurts, but I won't die. I'm just," he looks up and holds up his hands, and oh, god. Those are holes. Through Adam's wrists. "That's the worst. It was the worst it's ever been."

-

Kris bandages him up, but there's really no need. There's no blood coming from the wounds, just leftover blood all over Adam, on his clothes on his skin. Kris trashes the clothes, and wipes Adam down, runs a bath. Picks him over. He waits, knows Adam will share the story, but for now, he makes the connections himself.

He holds up Adam's hands, cleans the dried blood from underneath the fingernails and the lines in Adam's palm. He wipes a washcloth across the holes, fucking holes in Adam's wrists. They're healing now, impossibly translucent skin stretched across where Kris could see through a few minutes ago. He leans Adam forward and winces at long lash marks, welts deep into his back. Cringes, even though Adam won't.

"And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do," Kris says, and Adam tilts his head back, resting it in Kris' hands, his eyes closed as he cries.

-

It takes nearly an hour for Kris to scrub the blood, some of it dried, off Adam's skin. By the time he's coaxing Adam out of the tub, the wounds are nearly healed, shiny skin overlaying scars that Kris will run fingers across in a few weeks, wondering.

He takes Adam to bed, slides in next to him, under blankets, because Adam's shivering, and he's barely opened his eyes. Exhaustion, and Kris wonders if he should be treating for shock. He's trying to remember symptoms and treatments when Adam opens his eyes, and licks his lips.

"Can you get me some water? Please?"

He drinks the entire glass Kris brings him and then sets it down, hand trembling. Kris watches the glass rock, before it settles. Then he looks back at Adam, who's sitting now, and after a few deep breaths, he looks up at Kris.

"I don't know what to say," Adam says, and then smiles, weakly. Kris sits, slumping next to him, nuzzling into Adam's shoulder.

"Where were you?" Kris says. Start with the easy questions, the rest will come.

"Somewhere old. Somewhere far. It's not anywhere I've been before," Adam says, and he looks confused, like he's trying to remember. Kris doesn't say anything. He waits, instead. "They weren't speaking Aramaic, or anything. It sounded more like. I think it was Persian, actually. I have no idea how I know that."

Kris reaches up and kisses Adam's neck, gently, and then tugs him down into bed. He curls around Adam and tugs the covers over them, wrapping a leg around his waist and nuzzling his face into Adam's back.

He waits, feels Adam's shoulders relax, feels him take a deep breath before he starts speaking.

"It's the only time it's ever really hurt. I've been shot, stabbed, poisoned. I've been fucking bludgeoned to death with a golf club. But three lashes in, and my back was flayed open like a- like. I don't even know," Adam breaks off, and his next inhale is shuddering. It takes him a few minutes to get himself together and Kris squeezes him, wraps a leg tighter when Adam speaks again. "I thought that was it. I was going to bleed out, and just. But then they pinned me down, and started. They hammered nails through my wrists, and I felt it go past bone. I felt my wrist bone just- shift. It wasn't like anything, ever. It took me too long to die. Way, way too long to die. I just. I wasn't sure I was gonna make it home, this time."

 

-

They fall asleep after Adam stops sobbing, after Kris presses kisses to the scars across Adam's back, healed over already, but still sensitive, making him shiver through shaky breaths. Adam sleeps for hours, into the next day and nearly to dusk. Kris putters, makes coffee and doesn't leave. He orders food, calls in sick to work and makes more coffee.

Adam pads in, sock feet nearly silent on lino and he greets Kris with a soft hand on the back of his neck. He's solid, his hand steady and Kris leans into the touch, presses up against Adam's chest and takes a deep breath.

"I'm glad you're back," Kris says, and Adam smiles, kissing Adam's neck.

"Yeah, me too. I was scared. I kept thinking of you," Adam turns Kris, so they're facing each other, still touching. "It'll be easier, next time. If it hurts."

"Easier?" Kris looks at him, disbelieving.

"Ok, not easier. But I know I can make it through it, and I know you'll take care of me after."

"Always," Kris says, and he kisses Adam, gently.

"Thank you."

"Always," Kris says, shaking his head. "Just. So you know. It's always."

Adam smiles, and wraps his arms around Kris, pulling him in. When Kris goes to pull back, Adam's gone and Kris turns back to his coffee, sitting at the kitchen table to wait.

-


End file.
